Question: Daniel is 5 times as old as Stephanie and is also 32 years older than Stephanie. How old is Stephanie?
Answer: We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of Daniel and Stephanie. Let Daniel's current age be $d$ and Stephanie's current age be $s$ $d = 5s$ $d = s + 32$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. Since we are looking for $s$ , and both of our equations have $d$ alone on one side, this is a convenient time to use elimination. Subtracting the second equation from the first equation, we get: $0 =$ $5s$ $-$ $ (s + 32)$ which combines the information about $s$ from both of our original equations. Solving for $s$ , we get: $4 s = 32$ $s = 8$.